How They Sorted Mail in 1903

Hint: You needed a decent throwing arm and good aim

You probably have an inkling that modern-day mail is sorted by machines. But back in 1903, it had to be done by guys named Ralph or Wesley. They had a lot of letters to sort, and they had to do it quickly—so this is the "system" the U.S. Post Office Department came up with. (You don't have to watch the whole clip, ten seconds will give you the idea.)

Enter a caption (optional)

Sometimes Ralph and Wes were on shift at the same time, while a third guy named Clarence kept dumping letters onto their desk:

Enter a caption (optional)

Those things they're throwing the letters into aren't bins, but bags. Here they're tying them up, joined by Clarence as well as Samuel:

Enter a caption (optional)

That last video was in focus enough that I became curious about those semicircular racks, which were probably made out of either iron or dinosaur bones. Alas, all I could find was a patent application for a later (1910) design that apparently improved on the design of the one we saw in the videos. Near as I can tell from the language in the application, the chief improvement seems to be that these can be broken down.

Enter a caption (optional)

In any case, the modern-day U.S. Postal Service has a decidedly more efficient system in place:

Enter a caption (optional)

I might actually prefer to work at the older place.

The latest design news, jobs & events. Straight to you every other week.

Join over 300,000 designers who stay up-to-date with the Core77 newsletter...

I love how the video shows the mail man actually picking up the mail. My mail man will not pick my mail up from my mail box. He is so lazy or stupid he will actauly deliver my mail and leave the outgoing mail in my mail box. When I call to complain about this, the post office claims they are not obligated to pick up outgoing mail in a mail box. I wonder if they tell the postal workers what the little flag is for.... OMG, privatize the mail system in this country! it's horrible. Thanks :-)

It sucks that you have a carrier that does not put customers first. If that individual worked in the office that I worked in, they would be well on their way to being fired. Not all of us are bad, but unfortunately there is that small percentage who are and they stand out. We did better for on time delivery than FedEx or UPS this past holiday season. I know it is tough, but please to not judge the whole Postal Service based on a few workers. If there was something I could do to help, I would. You can file a complaint on-line that goes to USPS HQ in Washington DC. Maybe it will help. Good Luck and Happy New Year!

The Ili Wearable Translator is primed to become a casualty of Design vs. Marketing

What could be worse than producing a brilliant product, only to see it undercut by tone-deaf marketers? That's the problem faced by the Ili Wearable Translator, a cleverly-executed device that translates spoken sentences on the fly. Designed with the traveler in mind, the microphone has been engineered to "accurately [capture]

Disney Research's VertiGo wall-climbing robot defies gravity

A collaboration between Disney Research Zurich and Autonomous Systems Lab at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) has yielded the VertiGo, a sort of RC car/drone hybrid. The lightweight four-wheel vehicle features a pair of tiltable propellers, and since those propellors can tilt independently and provide thrust in two

The tech is nearly here. The designs aren't

The tech blogosphere is abuzz with news of this screen technology: Produced by LG, the OLED screen is "a prototype 18-inch screen…that rolls up like a piece of paper," according to The Verge. Hype is building as LG prepares to roll it out (pardon the pun) at CES, and it's

"What if we could put the power of the Internet of Things (IoT) into the hands of many more people than ever before?" That may have been the question they asked themselves when they started to build it. The historical records from that time are